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Life and Video Games: "The Trail"
It's interesting to me how video games can actually teach you skills that are transferable in the rest of your life. I started writing this post a while ago, and now I'm about done with this game (until/unless there are updates), but I still want to share.
"The Trail" is a game where you walk down a trail, picking up items of value you find, between rest stops. You also complete challenges after which you receive a "recipe" for food, clothing, or decorations. At the rest stops you can craft, sell, and buy items.
Very early on, it becomes obvious that you want a really good hat to help you keep your energy up. If your energy gets too low, you can energize with food, but if you run out of food or forget to eat, you will faint, and your things will fall out of your backpack, and passersby will likely take them.
It also becomes obvious that you want a big backpack. Better shirts and pants give you a little more storage as well.
After a while, you can build a house, then expand it. Inside, you can have furniture, some of which is just decorative, but most of which gives you additional benefits. For example, a bed helps you last longer on the trail and a chair helps your shoes last longer. Various kitchen items make your food more refreshing.
Clutter
There are two kinds of storage you can buy. One is shelving. On each bookcase you can store up to 12 items, no matter how large. And the items are accessible to everyone in your town.
The other kind is a trunk. Inside, you can store a certain volume of items, and many items can be "stacked" up to 10 high, so that ten items fit in just a little more space than one item. No one else in your town can get to these items.
Looking in other people's houses, it became clear you could get more than one of each of these storage items. I now have 11 bookshelves and 13 trunks. It sounds out of control, doesn't it? Just like my real house!
I determined that I do not want to buy any more trunks. Each trunk has a purpose. For example, in three I store building materials at each of the three levels. In three more I store finished housing materials, clothing, and food items. I should not need more than one trunk for each of these purposes, though sometimes I have so many crafted items curing that it does take a lot of space.
Still, I pick up everything I see on the trail, so I end up with a lot of stuff.
No recipe requires more than 4 of the same item, and all items are replaceable. So there's really no need to have more than 10 of anything stackable. So one strategy is that once I have more than ten of something (with some exceptions for things that are valuable in many recipes), it's time to get rid of them, either by crafting something with them or selling them directly.
And once I have crafted things, there's no reason to have more than one I'm using and a spare, so I should just sell the others.
And there are some things for which there are no use (except as something to collect for a challenge), so I sell all of those as soon as I get them.
I still have plenty of trunks, but I also have enough space to organize my furniture to look comfortable.
Edited to add: I bought two more trunks to be able to save up stuff things to sell. Conditions have changed in the town such that it's advantageous to wait until you have 21 items to sell rather than selling them ASAP.
In real life, I do tell myself things like one dresser and my three feet of closet should be big enough to hold all my clothes, the same way I think I have enough trunks and shelves in the game.
But there are things I never use. Of course "never" is a tough word because it's a very long time. I have a lot of hobbies, and I don't have time to do them all. I tend to go back and forth between several of them. But some of my things have not been touched in a very long time. Should I conclude that I don't need the supplies for those? Probably.
I have a lot of books that I have not read yet. If I still haven't read them, that's a sign that they are not of interest to me. Or that I should read them already. I can't know for sure until I read them. That's why decluttering takes so long! But really, just like on the trail, I can usually re-buy things that I think I'll need in the future. You can't count on specific styles of lamps always being available, but acceptable lamps probably always will be as well as non-rare books.
Specializing
In the game, I think there is room to stuff every single piece of useful furniture into your house, but I have chosen not to. Specifically, there are three kinds of couches that lower your cost for river crossings. I got one near the beginning but decided not to get more and have since sold the one I have. (Don't worry, there are still places to sit!) Instead, I decided to amass such big piles of money that I can easily afford any river crossing without the discount.
I joked to another player that she had all her couches facing the same direction, one right behind the other, like stadium seating. She laughed and said that she basically treated her house like a warehouse.
Also, some of the furniture is just ugly (to me). And all you really need anyway is a really good hat, a really big backpack, and decent tools. Everything I have is good enough so far. By good enough, I mean so durable that I sell more than half of what I make, in some cases ten times what I make or more. So it's really no big loss unless I need to be the best at everything.
Also, the way we can share things, it would make sense to get all the furniture that improves one type of item (like axes) and let other people get all the furniture for other items (like slingshots or backpacks). (But we don't actually do that, partly because you can also buy and share things that are more perfect than anything we can make.)
In real life, you could also get so good in some areas that it makes up for other areas somewhat. For example, I'm not into having to earn money, so I am above average in frugality skills to make up for that. (This is the opposite of what I do in the game!)
But I still like doing some of all kinds of things. More specialization in some areas would mean it would make sense to get better tools for those activities and hang out with other people good at those things. I still don't have a feeling about what I next want to become expert in. So far, things have sort of happened to me. I became an expert typist. Then an expert at my employer's degree audit system. I'm currently working on cooking foods I like that are minimally evil and learning Spanish.
Changing Times
I curated a great assortment of things to share on the shelves. Then people moved on with their goals and wanted different things. For a while I reserved one shelf for special requests. But I've changed most of the other shelves, too. It is amazing how long it used to take me to update my offerings. It is hard to admit that the perfect assortment is no longer perfect.
(Nowadays, no one is even playing except Robin, so I just put up whatever he wants.)
In real life, I've read blog posts about clutter that recommend making sure that you are not collecting and storing things for someone who you are not. You may have some things that were perfect for the old you, but for which the current you has no use. Or you may have some idealized version of who you would like to be for which you are collecting items.
In my case, it's hard to tell when I'm done with an old hobby. And for a long time, I never knew whether I would get a job that would require some of the things I've collected, but now that I'm retired, I am free to get rid of all that stuff (except maybe for tutoring resources), plus all those job-hunting hints and resources.
"The Trail" is a game where you walk down a trail, picking up items of value you find, between rest stops. You also complete challenges after which you receive a "recipe" for food, clothing, or decorations. At the rest stops you can craft, sell, and buy items.
Very early on, it becomes obvious that you want a really good hat to help you keep your energy up. If your energy gets too low, you can energize with food, but if you run out of food or forget to eat, you will faint, and your things will fall out of your backpack, and passersby will likely take them.
It also becomes obvious that you want a big backpack. Better shirts and pants give you a little more storage as well.
After a while, you can build a house, then expand it. Inside, you can have furniture, some of which is just decorative, but most of which gives you additional benefits. For example, a bed helps you last longer on the trail and a chair helps your shoes last longer. Various kitchen items make your food more refreshing.
Clutter
There are two kinds of storage you can buy. One is shelving. On each bookcase you can store up to 12 items, no matter how large. And the items are accessible to everyone in your town.
The other kind is a trunk. Inside, you can store a certain volume of items, and many items can be "stacked" up to 10 high, so that ten items fit in just a little more space than one item. No one else in your town can get to these items.
Looking in other people's houses, it became clear you could get more than one of each of these storage items. I now have 11 bookshelves and 13 trunks. It sounds out of control, doesn't it? Just like my real house!
I determined that I do not want to buy any more trunks. Each trunk has a purpose. For example, in three I store building materials at each of the three levels. In three more I store finished housing materials, clothing, and food items. I should not need more than one trunk for each of these purposes, though sometimes I have so many crafted items curing that it does take a lot of space.
Still, I pick up everything I see on the trail, so I end up with a lot of stuff.
No recipe requires more than 4 of the same item, and all items are replaceable. So there's really no need to have more than 10 of anything stackable. So one strategy is that once I have more than ten of something (with some exceptions for things that are valuable in many recipes), it's time to get rid of them, either by crafting something with them or selling them directly.
And once I have crafted things, there's no reason to have more than one I'm using and a spare, so I should just sell the others.
And there are some things for which there are no use (except as something to collect for a challenge), so I sell all of those as soon as I get them.
I still have plenty of trunks, but I also have enough space to organize my furniture to look comfortable.
Edited to add: I bought two more trunks to be able to save up stuff things to sell. Conditions have changed in the town such that it's advantageous to wait until you have 21 items to sell rather than selling them ASAP.
In real life, I do tell myself things like one dresser and my three feet of closet should be big enough to hold all my clothes, the same way I think I have enough trunks and shelves in the game.
But there are things I never use. Of course "never" is a tough word because it's a very long time. I have a lot of hobbies, and I don't have time to do them all. I tend to go back and forth between several of them. But some of my things have not been touched in a very long time. Should I conclude that I don't need the supplies for those? Probably.
I have a lot of books that I have not read yet. If I still haven't read them, that's a sign that they are not of interest to me. Or that I should read them already. I can't know for sure until I read them. That's why decluttering takes so long! But really, just like on the trail, I can usually re-buy things that I think I'll need in the future. You can't count on specific styles of lamps always being available, but acceptable lamps probably always will be as well as non-rare books.
Specializing
In the game, I think there is room to stuff every single piece of useful furniture into your house, but I have chosen not to. Specifically, there are three kinds of couches that lower your cost for river crossings. I got one near the beginning but decided not to get more and have since sold the one I have. (Don't worry, there are still places to sit!) Instead, I decided to amass such big piles of money that I can easily afford any river crossing without the discount.
I joked to another player that she had all her couches facing the same direction, one right behind the other, like stadium seating. She laughed and said that she basically treated her house like a warehouse.
Also, some of the furniture is just ugly (to me). And all you really need anyway is a really good hat, a really big backpack, and decent tools. Everything I have is good enough so far. By good enough, I mean so durable that I sell more than half of what I make, in some cases ten times what I make or more. So it's really no big loss unless I need to be the best at everything.
Also, the way we can share things, it would make sense to get all the furniture that improves one type of item (like axes) and let other people get all the furniture for other items (like slingshots or backpacks). (But we don't actually do that, partly because you can also buy and share things that are more perfect than anything we can make.)
In real life, you could also get so good in some areas that it makes up for other areas somewhat. For example, I'm not into having to earn money, so I am above average in frugality skills to make up for that. (This is the opposite of what I do in the game!)
But I still like doing some of all kinds of things. More specialization in some areas would mean it would make sense to get better tools for those activities and hang out with other people good at those things. I still don't have a feeling about what I next want to become expert in. So far, things have sort of happened to me. I became an expert typist. Then an expert at my employer's degree audit system. I'm currently working on cooking foods I like that are minimally evil and learning Spanish.
Changing Times
I curated a great assortment of things to share on the shelves. Then people moved on with their goals and wanted different things. For a while I reserved one shelf for special requests. But I've changed most of the other shelves, too. It is amazing how long it used to take me to update my offerings. It is hard to admit that the perfect assortment is no longer perfect.
(Nowadays, no one is even playing except Robin, so I just put up whatever he wants.)
In real life, I've read blog posts about clutter that recommend making sure that you are not collecting and storing things for someone who you are not. You may have some things that were perfect for the old you, but for which the current you has no use. Or you may have some idealized version of who you would like to be for which you are collecting items.
In my case, it's hard to tell when I'm done with an old hobby. And for a long time, I never knew whether I would get a job that would require some of the things I've collected, but now that I'm retired, I am free to get rid of all that stuff (except maybe for tutoring resources), plus all those job-hunting hints and resources.